This sense of solidarity, of a human chain of meaning or fellowship of witness, tells people – sometimes wordlessly – that they are not alone, but part of a common world of feeling. - Hermione Lee

One of the most common ritual-making missteps I encounter is this:

People create ritual with intention—but they forget to create coherence.

By coherence, I mean that which helps us understand our place in the world; the way in which we situate our experiences into the web of life.

Without coherence, ritual can feel empty or shallow. It lacks the heft of context; the sense that we are walking along on a well-trodden path. Without coherence, rituals lack meaning.

This is why so many new religious movements try to connect themselves to ancient traditions. The history of Wicca, or the Neopagan movement, is a great example. Despite being a twentieth-century invention, it cultivated beautiful echoes of ancient traditions and claimed language that harkened back to ancient Greek, Celtic and other spiritualities—making it meaningful. Folklorists like Margaret Murray developed the witch-cult theory that posited the idea that early modern witch trials were an attempt to suppress a pre-existing pagan religion, which she was reviving.

Although this has largely been disproven by further academic research, it doesn’t make Wicca inauthentic! Because every tradition was once an innovation! It simply means that Wicca did a great job of offering its practitioners coherence—putting its rituals in the context of a known history.

Contrast that with much of humanist ritual. Secular humanist leaders struggle to create meaningful celebrations because there are fewer opportunities to connect to calendars and traditions from the past. This necessitates ritual novelty—a sure-fire way for ritual to feel flimsy.

This is why I love ‘composting’ ritual, as my friend Jen Bailey puts it: putting new twists on old traditions. That’s what inspired the Candlemas house-blessing ritual I’m sharing in this video.

Here was a tradition that is pretty much culturally dead—nobody I know celebrates Candlemas! But it has this wonderfully rich, charming history. Forty days after Christmas, in the middle of February, people used to bring a candle to their church to be blessed so that they’d have a special candle to light in times of trial—when someone was sick or in trouble.

In Poland this was called a thunder candle, because it was said to protect people from lightning and wolves(!) But in Italy, there was an extra ritual. There, the priest would walk around and bless every home in the parish.

And I thought - isn’t that wonderful!? Here’s an opportunity to build community connections, neighborliness, and meaningful conversation to an ancient ritual tradition. The video shares what that looked like on the streets of Brooklyn in 2025…

…so if you’re inspired, I hope you’ll try this celebration, too! And let me know how it goes :)

‍

‍